There is a fig tree on a friend’s land that gives the best figs I have ever tasted. This afternoon I went to pick them, as I do every August, with a wicker basket that has taken the shape of my hands.
Picking figs asks for an attention from another time. You have to look closely, touch them barely, know which one is at its point: the one that yields a little and lets out a drop of honey.
The whole tree smells of sun and ripe summer. Bees buzz around the open fruit, and the still air wraps over everything.
We filled the basket unhurriedly, talking about small things, the kind you do not say over the phone.
Then, in the shade, we ate them with our hands, letting the juice run down our wrists. There is no cleaner way to eat a fig.
I keep the afternoon the way one keeps a seed: small, closed, full of something that has not yet happened.
Perhaps that is why I like August: because it tastes of what can be touched and eaten and shared.